


Not Used To Positive Attention

by dancinbutterfly



Series: Justified [10]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: (kinda), 1990s, Alternate Universe - 1990s, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Military, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Anal, Anal Sex, Asian Character(s), Billy and Goodnight are so fucking in love with each other, Billy is a hustler and squatter, Billy references movies all the time even inside his own head, Blockbuster - Freeform, Boys In Love, Boys Kissing, Cuddling & Snuggling, Curtain Fic, Declarations Of Love, Dirty Talk, Don’t copy to another site, First Time, First Time Topping, Gay Sex, Gift Giving, Goody is an Army Ranger, Happy Sex, Homelessness, Honesty, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Human Trafficking, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kissing, Laughter During Sex, Love, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Past Human Trafficking, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Porn with Feelings, References to Billy's in-fic history and all that implies, Self-Reflection, Sex Work, Squatting, Touching, Trust, Watching Movies, a dysfunctional disaster getting properly dicked down in the softest sweetest way, movies - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-13 20:21:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20588513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: Before Netflix and chill, there was making it a Blockbuster night. The first time Goodnight and Billy made it a Blockbuster night was something pretty damn special for both of them.





	1. Not used to positive attention?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [decoy_ocelot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/decoy_ocelot/gifts).

> This installation is COMPLETE - I'm just betaing it. :D I'm so sorry it took me so long but I did it! Thanks a million to literally every single person who helt me - font, Lazae, Jo, poem - but especially decoy. Your support, input and critique shaped this, changed this and got me to finish this. This is for you. Thank you for not giving up on me.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Goody comes bearing gifts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This installation is COMPLETE - I'm just betaing it. :D I'm so sorry it took me so long but I did it! Thanks a million to literally every single person who helt me - font, Lazae, Jo, poem - but especially decoy. Your support, input and critique shaped this, changed this and got me to finish this. This is for you. Thank you for not giving up on me.

> **Art Mullen**: What's the matter with you, Raylan? Not used to positive attention?  
**Raylan Givens**: No, I loved that. Can we continue?  
**Tim Gutterson**: No, the moment's gone. 

\- Justified 4.12 _Peace of Mind_

* * *

**Early Spring - Sometime in the Mid-90s**

* * *

_Goody does not buy him a TV. Billy already has one. It’s got pirated cable because he can live without a lot of things (running water, a motor vehicle, and actual doorknobs for example) but he needs his American Movie Classics and he needs his HBO. What Goody brings to the storage container-turned-apartment Billy calls home is a fucking VCR. _

_ He hides it in his duffle behind his back when he arrives while he waits for Billy to snap the padlock shut on the hasp and staple Goody had (covertly) helped him install on the inside of the rolling door. Then he pulls it out with a flourish, saying “Tada!” and everything. He is a ridiculous man and he makes Billy ache down to his bones. _

_ His throat feels tight as Goody kicks awkwardly out of his boots and shoves them in his duffle before padding around to the sad little TV. He always takes his shoes off even though the floor is literally concrete, like this tiny room in a temperature controlled storage facility is a home and not a move that’s more sideways than upwards from the empty building he was squatting in when they met. “I don’t have any tapes.” _

_ “Well, I have a Blockbuster card so that’s all right.” _

_ “You do?” Billy feels like a total loser but he’s always wanted a Blockbuster card. He’s gone in a few times, wandered up and down the aisles of movies and wished that he could have something resembling steadiness so that he could just take one, watch it like a normal person, and bring it back. He wonders if his sister has one. He hopes she does. “You use it lately?” _

_ “Nope.” Goody pops the P a little harder than is probably necessary. “You think I’m going to try and pick a movie without you? I wouldn’t know where to start. I haven’t been able to come up with one you haven’t seen yet.” _

_ That is unfortunately true. Goody’s got good taste but he’s tragically under exposed. The man’s more of a reader than a movie-goer. _

_ “Comes from Army life. There is a lot of hurry up and wait, let me tell you. Gotta have a good paperback in your pocket at all times.” _

_ So, Goody’s read the book version of a lot of Billy’s favorites. It’s not totally insufferable but it’s borderline. _

_ “It was stupid to bring a VCR and no tapes, Goody.” Billy chides, settling down on his bed. _

_ It’s a mattress and a box spring that he fell asleep on so fast most nights it was like falling off a cliff. Goody rescued it from an early death on the side of the road with the rest of the trash when a fellow soldier had been reassigned to a base somewhere in Colorado two months ago. If Goody had paid for it Billy wouldn’t have been able to accept it, some things were just too much, but the man’s new position was one that would require he and his wife live on base in a place already furnished by the US Army and the family that were replacing them didn’t want the furniture. So, they’d taken Goody’s friend’s truck (“Eddy owed me a favor. Truth to tell, that idiot owes me about fifteen favors. Now he’s down to fourteen.”) and hauled it out of the small one-story brick house for the cost of nothing more than their labor. _

_ That bed was the first thing Billy put in the tiny storage unit he had rented under the name William Kiddman. Goody had sprawled on the bare pillow-top in his BDU pants and a white undershirt, sweaty from the heavy lifting, limp with exhaustion and beaming with a pride he only ever got after successful gift-giving. “You should join me down here on your bed, cher.” _

_ “My bed,” Billy repeated, a little awestruck. _

_ “Mmm.” Goody agreed. “Your man on your bed.” _

_ Billy still doesn’t remember how he got down on the mattress with Goody. It wasn’t that long again and he most have moved himself. But one moment he was standing and the next he had his face in the dip where Goody’s skin scooped down beneath his clavicle before curving up towards his neck. His mouth was open and Goody’s skin tasted like salt and fabric softener and skin and electricity and he arched into the touch, hungry. So Billy had pulled him open with his fingers on his new bed until Goody was choking on the material of his own shirt to keep from screaming. _

_He hadn’t expected to like fucking Goody so much, not even after the first time when he had dissolved into beautiful pleasure at having his hole touched and filled and stretched. He could see how much Goody enjoyed it but it seemed like there should have been…_too much_, at least for that kind of reaction. _

_Sometimes there _was_ too much but Billy had fallen in love with the act of spreading Goody wide anyway. How could he do anything but adore it when Goody loved it so much that he would devour every millimeter Billy deigned to give him and beg for more? Billy didn’t want him to ever have to beg. He just wanted Goody to throw his head back and whimper and sigh and smile all at once and say “please” and make the request sound like he was giving himself away. When Goody shattered into pieces, trying to pull all of Billy inside his lava-hot body he could manage, he burned Billy right back until there was nothing left but cool ashes of afterglow. His own orgasm was usually an explosion that came when he gave Goody what he wanted but only because he had somewhere to put his desire now, something to do with the _wantwantGoodytaketakeGoodyhave_ that lit him up when they were a little too close, touched a little too long, clicked a little too hard. _

_ Fucking Goody open on three of his fingers on his bed, his own bed, had made Billy easy and pliant like he’d never been in his whole life. Everything felt liquefied from his brain in his skull to the bones in his toes so when Goody asked him to jerk himself onto his chest, Billy had just done it without pausing once to think about how he would have felt, or how things used to be. _

_ That was a good day. One of his best days. _

_ This day isn’t turning out too bad either, Billy thinks as he watches sits on the foot of his bed and watches Goody. _

_ Goody, in turn, studies his meager electrical layout and his utter lack of anything resembling a movie collection and frowns. "You don't have any movies. How can we watch a movie with we don't have any on hand?" _

_ He says this as if it is news and not par for the course for transience and abject poverty that Billy has been living in since arriving in America. What he did not say was "How can you of all people not have any videos?" Goddamnit, Billy needs him to stop saying and not saying things that make him love Goody more. The man’s got him coming and going, like the air is catching fire every time he breathes. _

_ “Don’t they teach you guys to plan before they throw you out into the messes you make at that fancy murder school of yours?” Billy manages, on target, charming, funny, in line with the conversation even. _

_ “Torture school. It’s a torture school,” Goody corrects while he connects AV cables to the back of the TV, as if this distinction somehow makes it better. _

_Billy’s been tortured several times, when he had failed escape attempts or made the mistake of daring to try to set boundaries with _them_ or _they_ had a reason to use the fact that hurting him was an always-effective way to get Yeon-mi to cooperate. It wasn’t an experience he’d been subjected to all the time but the few instances he’d been put through had given him a very good idea of where his breaking points were for a whole host of ways to suffer before he would give anything to make it stop. He’s not sure that knowing how to hurt someone and make sure they live through it isn’t worse than just fucking ending them. _

_ “I told you, my unit’s not part of that little corner of the SpecOps underworld, thank Christ. We just share happen to share real estate with TRADOC’s crown jewel.” Goody says with disgust. “Goddamn spooks.” He shudders and the muscles of his back and shoulders flex and ripple under his olive shirt. _

_ It’s a size too tight, like maybe it once fit before a few too many trips around an industrial dryer on high. The rippling motion reminds him of wind on water like at the ocean half an hour from Yeon-mi’s apartment. Both taste like salt in on his tongue but ocean water doesn’t make him feel like he’s falling into a supernova. Only Goody’s heat-slick skin can do that. _

_ Goody makes him crazy, actually crazy. The rest of the world fades away because the size and force of Goody crowds it out. _

_Billy’s always been proud of how together, generally composed and just fucking _with it_ he always manages to be. All things considered, his acting skills could rival any Oscar winner and he's stayed method through things Brando couldn't even dream of. The still facade of disinterest he's perfected is a performance through a crucible of misery. He can reliably maintain character whether he's in the throes of mind-bending agony as he's battered into pliability with slow steady whipping with a belt, buckle end first or the choking on the heart-numbing humiliation of having to trade a dry fuck for something to eat because this time, because he lacked the charisma, charm, and gregariousness to get fill his stomach on a smile, an offer to do odd jobs, a handie or even a blowjob. _

_ He stays stone-faced as Buster Keaton when he needs to and he's not ashamed of that. It’s a source of real pride for him actually. He hasn’t had many of those in his life so he’s cultivated the few he’s found. _

_ Only now Billy’s watching this ridiculous white boy stick a plug in a socket and he can't stop himself chewing on his lip as he watches, feeling his eyes dart after each movement and gesture like fish cashing the gift of breadcrumbs. His palms are fucking sweating and trembling and he keeps finding himself rubbing the underside of his jaw and then his temple, again and again, breaking character like some amateur SNL host. Fuck, though, Billy’s body has gone on strike starting from the top and making its way down to his hands because he’s got no other way to express this stupid, nervous sexual energy. _

_ Billy knows that if, fuck it, when he puts them on Goody, they’ll stop though. He resists for a grand total of two minutes before reaching out and sliding the closest hand up under Goody's t-shirt. He doesn't do anything more than rest his palm against the skin of his lower back, then over his flank, and back, but it's like a miracle. The anxiety bleeds away leaving his hand cool and still once they’re holding onto Goody. All that's left behind is the burning in his blood and the marvel that is Goody's soft skin under his own contrasting with the different sort of softness from the cotton shirt brushing his knuckles. _

_ He's lost in it until he feels a gentle tap on his arm with an open palm and Goody asks, “So which one?” _

_ Billy blinks in confusion. “What?” _

_ Goody’s dimples appear as if conjured by some strange magic. “You were not listening to me at all, were you cher?” _

_ Billy shrugs and smiles. He never smiled in his life so much before Goodnight Robicheaux bought him breakfast for dinner. “I was enjoying the show.” And isn’t that the truth. _

_ “Ah.” Goody smiles and tilts his head. His hair is shorter than it’s ever been, buzzed to less than a half inch from his scalp a week ago. Billy is dying to know what he’d be like with hair long enough to really grab a fistful of and hang on to. “I’ve been there. However, I mastered the ability to ogle, fondle and maintain polite conversation simultaneously so I can usually conceal it.” _  
  
_ “Is there a trick to it?” _

_ “Nope. Just have to practice. Repeated exposure to the subject of one’s admiration can provide helpful in increasing functionality but I regret to inform you, it doesn’t do very much to reduce the other elements of distraction.” _

_ Billy rolls his eyes. “You can just say I turn you on.” _

_ “Alright.” Goody sits back and pushes a button on the VCR. It makes a little whirring noise and a green light goes on. The clock flashes 12:00 at them over and over in a slightly paler, more sickly shade. He gestures grandly at his achievement and declares “You turn me on.” _

_ “That was terrible,” Billy manages. _

_ “It was fantastic.” _

_ “No. It was bad.” He covers his face with his free hand but leaves a gap between his fingers so he can still see Goody’s brilliant grin. “You should be court-martialed for that pun.” _

_ Goody seems to inflate at that. “How about you pun-ish me instead, mon vainqueur?” _

_ Billy groans at that because it’s so bad. It’s just so bad. _

_ Goody laughs and pounces on top of him, tugging his hand away from his face and pressing his smile into Billy’s cheek. “What? Not planning to take pun-itive measures?” _

_ “You are the worst,” he moans, despairing of this ridiculous man. “I hate you.” _

_ “You love me,” Goody protests and then freezes. Billy also goes still because yeah, he heard that too. _

_ Goody’s whole body is rigid as hardwood. He’s swallowing hard and his eyes are squeezed shut now. Billy can almost see him wracking his complex wonder of a mind for a way to backtrack ten seconds. _

_ Billy doesn’t want him too. He is less surprised than he thought he would be, knowing that he isn’t just loved but loves in return. He reaches up and rubs his hand over the fuzz on Goody’s head quick and a little rough. _

_ “It’s a good thing you love me too then.” _

_ Goody told him that the Medal of Honor was the highest the military could bestow on a soldier. The look on his face is what Billy thinks he’ll look like if he ever earns one, like a great, joyful star is being born inside him just to light what he’s looking at, and Goody is looking at him. _

_ “Good thing,” he agrees. _

_ Goody positively twinkles with glee at being able to address the affection between them. Billy, on the other, hand can feel a crystal hint of tears on his lashes but nothing solid enough to fall. _

_ Goody doesn’t comment. He just kisses him on the cheek before grabbing his keys up off the produce box that acts as a nightstand and jingling them in Billy’s direction. “Come on." Goody gives him another kiss, on the mouth this time, with a teasing suck to his lower lip that practically says 'play with me', before rolling off the bed and onto his feet. "We need to get moving. Don’t want Blockbuster to close on us.” _

_ It’s not even eight-o-clock yet. He can feel his face twisting into a confused frown. “They close at midnight.” _

_ “Right.” He shakes his keys again, like Billy is a cat Goody wants to play with. “So, we better get moving.” _

_ “Oh look.” Billy holds up his right middle finger. “It’s for you. And there’s another one.” He holds up his left. “Because you deserve it.” _

_ Goody leans down and sucks the bird he’s flipping on his left finger into his mouth. He swirls his tongue around it once, slow and careful, his eyes pinning Billy like a tack on cork board. His dick goes from half-asleep to high alert in about three seconds. He can’t get in a full breath by the time Goody pulls away with a sound that’s not quite a pop. _

_ “Now come on. It’ll take you forever to pick out what you want and they’ve got a twelve movie limit.” _

_ “Asshole.” _

_ “That particular topic will keep until later, I promise.” _

_ Billy would hate him. He would, except, God, he really he fucking loves him. He doesn’t take his hand but he does let their shoulders bump a few more times than is probably appropriate on their way to Goody’s shitty car. He’s learned that when it comes to Goody he’s very, very weak. He’s learned that despite everything, he’s okay with that. _


	2. No, I loved that.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the boys make it a Blockbuster night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of this chapters deals with Billy's sex work. It is not graphic, less than the rest of the fic actually, but always read with your self care in mind. 
> 
> Huge thanks to Jo who told me how to fix this actually. Couldn't have done it without you, SPECIFICALLY. <3

_Goody does his resolute level best to ignore the fact that Billy slinks off to suck off a middle-aged man in a Dole/Kemp ‘96 t-shirt that was far too small for his heavy frame behind the Blockbuster before they go inside._

_The guy calls his name (not his actual name, but a different one, Benny - Goody wasn't planning on asking and Billy would likely not be telling). Billy looks like he'd bitten into a salt-covered lemon before turning to face the guy with a soft "Hello there, stranger," like a something out a 40s noire. Billy's not wearing his work clothes for this particular outing, he's chosen soft faded jeans and a dark grey clean Volcom tee he probably snagged at a shelter somewhere double layered over a long sleeve black shirt against the cold but he could be a homme fatale just as he is. The confident and relaxed way he handles the guy with making a scene, keeps him quiet and pliant is straight out of Dashiell Hammett. Goody smokes an ill-advised cigarette out of the pack he won (cheated) off Arcade during their last poker game for just such an occasion and fishes out a pack of gum to proffer in case Billy wants it for when he’s done._

_Work is work. His work is on base at Ft. Benning training and practicing and wasting daylight and starlight and occasionally being sent places he can’t talk about to kill people who probably shouldn’t die. Billy’s work is wherever he can find it with anyone he wants to work for and if it finds him, chases him down on his off hours like this asshole had, Goody doesn't hold that against him. He’s told Billy before and he still means it now, that he’s not sure why his profession is considered the nobler of the two. People get to walk away from Billy’s still breathing most times. Goody thinks that’s better business, all things considered._

_Moments like these don’t happen often. Billy doesn’t let his work cross into their time together if he can help it. Still, he’s clear on the point that he is not a charity case and Goody doesn’t want him to be. Also, he knows Billy has a sister he sends money to somewhere out west and Billy won't let an opportunity pass for her sake when he would for himself. Goody admires the hell out of his strong, beautiful Billy Rocks but he can’t help but think of all the questions he’d like to ask, in long, quiet moments like these - when he knows what Billy is doing with someone else, things they haven’t done together. He thinks about asking Billy’s opinion on the taste of latex. He wonders what his thoughts are on flavored lubes. He muses about the last time Billy was tested, if he’s ever been tested at all because he’s so strong, so healthy, so beautiful with clear skin and eyes and nails that he can’t, he just fucking couldn’t cope if—_

_Goody viciously dismisses the thought. He can’t even pause on the idea of Billy wasting away like the so many of the men he's called friends have in the last few years. It's been less than ten years since he was a skinny barely-legal grunt confronted with fantasies made flesh in the from strong, powerful paragons of manhood who taught him everything he ever wanted to know about sex with encouragement and patience. He sought out a softer bootcamp with those older queers who laughed and trashed talked and teased and broke him out of all those rigid Southern cages, one touch at a time. He was on his knees and back when they educated him in his own body from how to kiss like he meant it to how take such a man down his throat to the base without hesitating to how to train his ass for every invited guest from thin curious fingers and hungry cocks to inescapable buzzing of toys and ruthlessly solid curled fists. He gloried in every experience and every now and then thought it was love, though a friendlier, more placid flavor of love than what he has with Billy now. _

_There were lovers, mentors, and friends scattered at the world that Goody was a better man for knowing and a better boyfriend for fucking. He connects easily. It’s a blessing his daddy used to say, the way Goody could walk into any room and walk out with lifelong companions. Goody agreed until he started to see so many of those friends, up close and from a distance through letters and phone calls, waste to skeletons covered in sores, scared and hallucinating and frail before they were gone. He thinks about them when he’s alone or there’s another fundraiser or someone on base mentions the pre-deployment HIV testing. What he tries not to dwell on is how lucky he is that he didn’t end up positive from slutting around what seemed like half Louisiana in high school. Goody makes himself be grateful and not speculative when he remembers getting his first was after Basic and how the civilian who took him home that first night slapped him, hard, when he'd been impatient with him as he dug around in his nightstand for a condom. Danny been maybe 35 or maybe 50 (at eighteen Goody had no gauge of how much age difference existed except that he was hot in a daddy sort of way) and his blow had been viscous. He'd been shocked by the slap and jerked away, ready to fuck off out of the situation when Danny caught his stinging face in both hands and practically snarled, “Baby boy, we’re dying out there. You have to be safe, you hear me? We're fucking dying.” Danny had kissed him so hard Goody cut his lip on his own teeth. When he pulled back he spoke tears on his eyelashes. “We’re dying and this is all we can do.” _

_It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out his gorgeous daddy for the night was positive. _

_Young stupid Goody hadn’t cared at the time. Danny was the kind of man he'd been waiting for since he was a skinny tween, watching Victor/Victoria in a darkened theater on a painfully muggy April afternoon, mesmerized as James Garner's King Marchand declared "I don't care if you are a man" before pulling Victor into his arms for a deep kiss. The fact that Victor was a crossdressing Julie Andrews hadn't mattered to him at the time. What burned into his brain was the power of those words and the image of a powerful man kissing someone he thought was another man. Replacing Julie with himself in his imagination went a long way to helping Goody figure out what his dick was for and that it pointed in the direction of strong men with deep voices and broad shoulders who knew how to take the lead and didn't give a fuck what the people around them said or did. He'd practically begged Danny fuck him on his back, face to face, he didn't care so long as his partner's big hands and firm grip stayed tight on his bony hips and arms. His concession to the moment was that Goody didn’t get so lost in the feeling of being full to miss the way he made sure the condom stayed secure even through their flailing pleasure. _

_After, smoking cigarettes in the mess of Danny's bed, Goody accepted his offered number and let him write it on the inside of his forearm in sharpie. Danny didn't write his name, just seven digits and his first initial and Goody set to work memorizing it. He didn't get liberty all that much back in the early days but Danny was kind and attractive and he had given him exactly what he wanted and as a local he'd hinted that he knew how to find more than what Goody had been able to by getting on a bus into the city and following rumors until he hit a bar. _

_The next time Goody had leave from base three weeks later, he'd called Danny as soon as he found a payphone. The cabbie who took him to the bar with no signage or any sort of outside lighting had been a little concerned by the quiet darkness but Goody spotted Danny leaning against the door waiting for him, tipped the driver, and climbed out. Danny had smiled at him, flicked away his cigarette and given him the kind of warm hug that reminded Goody of his cousins back home than a man who had turned him inside out on his cock less than a month before. He'd waited for the taxi to take off before opening the door with a flourish. Music and flashing lights poured out as if a damn broke and Goody blinked in surprise. Danny laughed at him and slung an arm around his shoulders and ducked in to shout, "Welcome home baby boy" into his ear over the din before ushering him inside. From there Danny set to work introducing Goody to The Right People, a collection of gay men ranging from their early twenties to their late sixties all of whom made Goody's breath catch in different ways, and established himself as the first(but not the last) to keep an eye on Goody as he dove headfirst down the depravity rabbit hole. _

_Danny died in ‘92 while Goody was in Somalia. A mutual acquaintance had been with him and the only comfort Goody had in missing his passing and funeral was knowing Danny wasn’t going to be forgotten. Goody certainly wouldn’t; the man had saved his life as surely as anyone in his platoon._

_He and Billy haven’t done anything that wasn’t safe. He knows that. He just fucking can’t consider Billy ending up like so many of the gorgeous men who brought woke him up to himself. Like Danny. _

_Goody looks up at the night sky and wonders if he’s too old to wish on stars. His daddy would call him a romantic fool which, he would concede, is accurate. He is a terribly romantic fool where Billy is concerned and he wishes desperately that he can take away as much of Billy’s pain as he gives him happiness and Goody knows, with a fierce and glorious certainty, that he is succeeding in making Billy happy if nothing else. He just wants permission to be his solace too. He doesn’t know how he’d do it but if Billy allowed him, he would do anything to help ease the hurts too. But he hasn’t yet. _

_So, Goody just waits. He waits and he doesn’t take. He gives what he’s got but not more than Billy seems to want. It’s really the best he can do. It’s worked so far. It’s worked really fucking well, actually. _

_Hell, Billy loves him. Billy said it, in his way, and Billy’s many things (some of them pretty shitty actually, like the way he refuses to accept compliments and the way he nitpicks at dining manners and holy shit, he is a rude asshole to just about everyone he meets when he’s not working; Good lord, Goody has never done so much apologizing to folks in his life before and he spends his time with goddamn grunts who don’t use ‘fuck’ as word so much as a comma) but he ain’t a liar, so he means it. Turns out, Goody can go pretty fucking far on love. _

_He can be patient. He’s the best goddamn sniper in This Man’s Army. He’s nothing but patience and Billy’s more important than any target. _

_And then Billy is back, pocketing a wad of cash and not even spitting or anything. He just rolls his eyes before he bumps his shoulder against Goody’s. They’re in public so paired with a wide, careless smile and his shining eyes, it’s almost as good as kiss. Goody feels just as breathless as he bumps back._

_“Hey.”_

_“Hey. So, I thought about it, and we’re definitely getting something with subtitles.” Billy informs him._

_“I’ve said it before, and I’ll reiterate it again here and now,” Goody declares on a long-suffering sigh, “You are a vicious sado-masochist.”_

_“You’re uncultured swine.” Billy shoots back, snatching the gum out of Goody’s hand without comment, pulling out a stick and pocketing the pack in his leather jacket that is too-cool by function rather than form. “Fellini?”_

_“Nothing European if you’re making me do this.”_

_“Ugh. But Almodóvar,” he practically whines but Goody is shaking his head before he can even finish the word. _

_No way. Goody not going is watching Billy watch Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down one more time the way he has the last handful of times they’ve splurged and gone over to Atlanta or Montgomery to walk around in public unafraid and stayed in halfway decent motels that actually had in-room VCRs. Goody learned quickly that he doesn’t like seeing the way that movie with its pseudo-romantic hostage situation shakes Billy out of his normal self and into a calm, academic, almost literary persona as he detaches from Goody, himself and everything but the movie. He especially doesn’t like it on a night when he’s also watched Billy walk away from him and into to a work situation. _

_So, Goody is drawing a line right here. He’s drawing it at this stupid Spanish director who has no idea what his work does to couple of gays in love a world away, who can’t even touch each other while they bicker over said movies. _

_Of course what comes out of his mouth is far bitchier, and therefore acceptable to Billy’s constant need to be challenged and refusal to be coddled. He knows his cher well enough to know when he can be soft and it’s not here. _

_“You want something Spanish, try Mexico. I hear there’s stuff from Latin America lately.” _

_“No, you have not. You’re trying to get me to cave and get something from East Asia with choreographed fight scenes.” Billy says. He assesses Goody, eyes narrowing the exact same way they do when he examines the meat at the butcher counter for quality of cut when they go to Winn Dixie. It is amazing how fast Billy can take him from agitated to aroused, truly. “Starring Bruce Lee. Or maybe Jackie Chan.”_

_“They are master actors,” Goody huffs. He is constantly stunned at how it is that Billy can always see through his bullshit. He loves it so damn much which is probably why he protests so stringently - so that there’s constantly opportunities for Billy to do so. “And if it’s in Chinese, it counts as subtitled.”_

_“You’re an asshole.” Billy declares. “I can’t go anywhere with you.” He emphasizes this with a cold glare that is downright withering. The semi Goody sports in his jeans roughly 95% of the time he’s in Billy’s presence almost starts to wilt under its power. _

_Almost. _

_Billy’s just so goddamn beautiful and the force of his personality is so fucking stunning to Goody. He’s possessed of a completely different sort of brilliance than Goody’s own loquacious and lazy intellect that keeps him on his toes and his straight razor wit makes his face hurt from smiling. He is so damn weak for him that it just spills out. _

_“That’s patently untrue, mo-“ he stutters. Public. They’re in public. No pet names in public. He hates being a man and he hates being a fag and he fucking hates the whole fucking world for one bright, burning moment. “Mon frer.”_

_Billy has stopped and is staring at him. Goody stares back as long as he can. He has no idea what Billy sees as he glances around the store. There are other people milling around. Mostly white, lower class Georgians just looking for something to do with their night, a few nuclear families with kids ranging from very small to early adolescences, a couple clusters of bored teenagers, one or two adults on their own or in pairs like them. The only thing they all have in common are the movies on the walls. _

_He tries not to fidget until finally Billy blessedly breaks the silence. “You know, Fists of Fury actually sounds pretty good. Subtitles though. None of that dub shit.”_

_“Agreed.”_

_“Also, Reanimator.”_

_“Are you fucking kidding me?”_

_“I love Reanimator.”_

_“All that about foreign cinema and you want to get some shlock horror piece of-“_

_“I didn’t say that was the only movie we were getting.” His smile is wicked, the same smile he gets before he backs Goody into something and puts his mouth on Goody’s skin, never the same place as the time before. “And something with Tom Hanks. I fucking love Tom Hanks.”_

_“You would.” _

_“He is an American treasure.”_

_“He’s a hack.”_

_“You absolutely cried during Forrest Gump.”_

_“I happen to have strong feelings about films that involve my brothers in arms.”_

_“You cried when Jenny died.”_

_“How can you possibly know that?” Goody feels absolutely attacked. He must look terrible against the bright yellow walls under under the brighter fluorescent lights that make up the decor of every Blockbuster in America. “We have not seen this film together, Billy.”_

_Billy just raises an eyebrow. “I know you. Comedy’s like right there. Grab Joe Versus the Volcano. It cracks my shit up.” He looks, assessing, around and spots the horror aisle, small compared to drama or new releases. “I’ll get the others.” _

_“You have the worst taste of anyone I know.”_

_“It’s broad.”_

_“You’re broad.”_

_Billy doesn’t respond to that. He just turns and walks towards his target which, all right, yes is in its way an answer because damn. Damn his ass in those jeans are their own type of broad. _

_Goody knows himself. He is special operations. He’s a living nightmare. He’s been trained by his country to be walking death. He is a goddamn Army Ranger who can kill you quickly from a distance or slowly up close. He can, if he wants, write his own ticket in to any base in the Army and any contractor in the private sector, both licit and illicit. He is also known in certain corners of the gay scene in Atlanta, Colorado Springs, D.C., Detroit and (in the tiny off-base underground) Okinawa as a party bottom who’s always been the type to go ass up sweet and fast with a smile on his face and a song in his heart saying, “please, sir, may I have some more” like little Oliver Twist with his bowl outstretched. _

_Sure he’s had a few boyfriends, men he liked enough that he might have loved if they had accepted the fact that he was happily and devotedly married to the Army but he met them in those same circles. So Goody has never been ashamed at how easy he’s given up his body to anyone who will play safe and with even a modicum of skill. He likes getting fucked too much. Hands on his body, putting him down and opening his hole up to be filled, feels too good, too right. _

_Goody’s always known what he is and he isn’t ashamed. He’s sought out what he wants since he realized that the dangers of sodomy the preachers in the hellfire and brimstone revival churches his daddy dragged him to were always shouting about was the same as the “faggot fudgepacking” the older boys had been cursing all through little league. Once he reached high school, he’d found an opportunity freshman year to finally try it. It was better than Goody had hoped it would be, to drape himself over a bench in the locker room for a varsity fullback so deep in the closet that he was already engaged to his high school paramour at sweet seventeen. Goody can still hear himself whining for **more, more, please more,** like a needy kitten under every hard thrust ten years later. He never looked back, just refined his taste. _

_He found likes to be put down and made to take it. He likes to be fucked hot, hard and wide open. He likes to be made to feel vulnerable and likes his partner to go deep, make him feel it in the back of his throat, make him feel dirty. And he likes getting a dick up his ass more than just about anything, although having something creative fucked up inside him can steal first place if his lover is good at what he does. He’s primal and he’s hungry and when he’s not working, it used to distract him from everything else. _

_It’s not like that with Billy because goddamn. Goddamn, this man. This man makes him slow down, ease up, cool off. This goddamn man sates the ravenous appetites in him, the ones that he didn’t realize were basically constant starvation until they were quieted. Billy Rocks doesn’t make the things he likes go away, but he does make Goody’s desperation ease because Billy himself is so very **much**. His presence alone makes Goody feel the same sort of completion that always required of ferocious sex to achieve. Billy subdued him without even trying, son vainqueur. _

_Is it any fucking wonder, Goody marvels as he grabs a tape of what is possibly the worst movie Tom Hanks has ever made off the white plywood shelf, that he’s putty in Billy’s hands? He doesn’t even care how bad it is because he gets to watch it with Billy, on the mattress sprawled beside him, his lean warm body making Goody feel liquid. It’s worth the price of the rental and the fact that it’s absolutely terrible. _

_Besides, he may actually get to hear Billy laugh. That’s more than worth it. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (whispers) seriously I was gonna do all the notes at once but so many notes about the torture school which is STILL RUNNING oh my god


	3. Can we continue?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Billy ask for permission then takes what he wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to Northstarfan for getting me through finishing this over the last couple days.
> 
> I was stuck on this chapter for over a year, you guys. Over a year. Then one day I had a moment when was driving I got unstuck and literally had to pull my car over and write before I lost it. I'm so glad I was able to get this written. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading. I hope you like it.

_Until Billy was fourteen, his index of Asian Leading Men consisted of Yul Brynner and… yeah. That was it. One of the less awful johns, who had mostly wanted a pretty too-young face and conversation, tried to rain on his parade by telling him that the great Chris Adams, King Mongtuk of Siam, Pharaoh Rameses the Second of Egypt wasn’t even really Asian but Billy hadn’t been having it. _

_“He’s Russian, the handsome Commie bastard,” the creeper said as he offered Billy a cigarette, sprawled naked in the creaky hotel bed, Westworld playing on the TV. _

_Billy had taken the cigarette absently, his attention far more fixed on the TV than the customer beside him. An android theme park and 1970s prosthetics on Yul’s handsome face were way more interesting than yet another naked man. Besides, he hadn’t thought it was very important to tell someone who called him “babydoll” that Russia was part of Asia, that where he was from sometimes men went to the CCCP to cut timber for years and came home thinner and harder if they made it back at all. _

_Then for six months, _they_ had an enforcer/driver/fucker-up-of-shit for his and Yeon-mi’s stable who was obsessed with chopsocky cinema. Billy’s world revolved around in-calls back then, 24/7 - preparing for them, taking them, cleaning up after them, recovering from them if he was very lucky, rinse and repeat - but since this guy didn’t bother Billy like a lot of muscle did (meaning that he didn’t beat the shit out of Billy on sight and fucked the girls, not his ass) Billy risked asking what he was watching his third week with _them_ after a particularly upsetting trick. _

_Apparently, the muscle had been waiting his whole life for chance to indoctrinate a new convert into the High Church of Bruce Lee because he’d cancelled Billy’s next appointment so that they could watch Enter the Dragon, from beginning to end, uninterrupted, and then discuss it. _

_To this day, Billy doesn’t remember the heavy’s name. He can’t even remember his face. What he remembers is the smell of his Old Spice deodorant, the indentation his huge body made next to Billy’s where they both sat shoulder to shoulder on the bed, and the seemingly impossible way Bruce Lee moved on the screen, the charm and grace with which he performed. He remembers every scene with crystal clarity, if not every line because each frame is imprinted with the profound relief that came with knowing that as long as it was playing, Billy was safe. _

_So yeah. Billy has loved Bruce Lee for a very long time and when it comes to Asian Leading Men, there is no one greater. Thinking of him encouraged Billy to keep at it when he was teaching himself through trial and error how to fight through intentional bar brawl or self-inflicted alleyway slugfest. Watching him with Goodnight lying between his thighs, the warm skin of his back resting against Billy’s own bare chest? That is not an equation that Billy ever really considered before. _

_The combination is…interesting. The way Bruce Lee’s muscles look, the sheen of the light reflecting off his chest, the tone of his voice when he speaks so seriously and the feeling of safety he evokes, have compounded with the way Goody feels in his arms, the familiar smell of his skin and soap and the weight of his body on top of Billy’s own to create a situation of interest. He didn’t even realize he had these interests - well, in Bruce Lee. He knew he was interested in Goody, of course, to fucking distraction, damn his blue eyes. _

_Goody is not helping. He keeps wiggling and readjusting every minute or so. He plays with Billy’s fingers, like his hands are more interesting than the movie. Weapon-calloused fingerprints trace the lines in his palms and pull shivers out of his spine as they glide between his knuckles and down over a constellation of faded cigarette burns on the back of his hand, the scars that mock him when he doesn’t pull on a pair of gloves. _

_It’s fucking ridiculous. Even The Manchurian Candidate and The Dead Zone told him that snipers were supposed to be able to sit still. “How’d you make it through those special ops schools if you can’t stop moving long enough to get through a movie?” He huffed finally, flicking the soft webbing between Goody’s thumb and index finger._

_“Well the point of Swick wasn’t exactly to drive me out of my mind with desire, mon vainqueur.” Goody admits. “Although if you were one of my instructors my time stationed at SOCOM probably would have been much more pleasant.”_

_Billy turned his attention from Bruce Lee to look more fully down at Goody. “Why do it if you didn’t enjoy it.”_

_“That is a complicated answer,” Goody sighs. “I think…I was in a rather vulnerable condition in a very specific way when I was young. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak as they say, though it was not terrible and it could have been far worse. A baby queen in a town full of God-fearing peasants with no interest in a queer bird, you understand.” He waves a dismissive hand, as if shooing the memories away. “Not to mention there weren’t exactly a lot of options for a boy like me because mine was an old family with a good name and a good reputation and fuck-all else.” He chuckled grimly. “If we weren’t so well known and of such high repute perhaps no one would’ve made such a fuss that I was so unshakably who I am and that I was going to do what I did with whom I chose how I liked. Although if the family had the same funds as they did when my father’s grandfather were alive, I imagine no one’d have looked twice at my more deviant escapades. I will tell you, Billy, it was enough that no one blinked a single eyelash at me blowing up those mailboxes or lighting that barn roof on fire."_

_"You set a barn on fire." Billy repeats. Of course, he did. Fucking white boys. _

_"Allegedly. Regardless, there are several reasons I didn’t pay much attention in school.”_

_That made Billy think about Little Women, and Katherine Hepburn’s Jo, making the most of the March family’s good name when everything else was gone. He had landed again on Yul Brynner but this time as Jason Compson in the Sound and the Fury, trying to hold back the collapse of his southern gentry family who are probably closest thing to Goody’s family that Billy can truly imagine. The fact that the closest he can get to understanding at all are classic Hollywood films lead him to respond with a humming noise which Goody takes as a sign to continue._

_“So college wasn’t much of an option and I had no plans to stay. Vagrancy wouldn’t do for a Robicheaux; my daddy’d never forgive me and for all his many flaws, I love my daddy very much. So, Army seemed ’s good an idea as any. When I did all the training and took all the tests, I was offered several options, including the chance to be the most powerful person in any room. I could have turned it down, of course. It would have been easy. So many easier things to do in the Army than SPECOPs, things I’d have been quite good at. Did you know that there’s an entire public relations division?” _

_Billy didn’t but he is not even remotely surprised. He imagines Goodnight could have written his own ticket there. _

_“But cher, you understand what it’s like to want to hold force in your own two hands and know that only a few people, if any, can take it from you.” He shifts in his arms so he can look up and meet Billy’s eyes. “That’s a different kind of safety. I didn’t know how very much I wanted it until after Basic and then I found I couldn’t turn it down.”_

_“And the killing doesn’t bother you?” He’s wondered that before. He wonders it a lot what killing would be like. It crosses his mind when he watches vendetta movies or when his client is in the same BDUs or dress greens as Goody and could be one of his platoon mates; or when he wakes up in a cold sweat from nightmares about casual violence and careless hands and torn skin inside his body and Yeon-mi making a joke in Korean, something snappish and mean so she wouldn’t cry even as she showed him how to use a hotel washcloth as a compression bandage and tried not to cry; or when Goody falls asleep snoring on his shoulder but then stops for a second, stops breathing altogether from his sleep apnea, and Billy is struck with the reminder of the terrible difference between a dead body curled up in a sitting position next to you in a pitch black metal box compared to a corpse sprawled out in bed beside you in stray beams of morning sunlight with the drugs from the night before still strewn around the room. Any of these things and more make him consider killing because he thinks of _them_, always_them._ He still isn’t sure and when Goody answers like this, he doesn’t really help and to be fair, Billy doesn’t make the question all that clear. _

_Goody shrugs. “I haven’t had to kill anyone much yet. A few drug lords who don’t mind gutting their own men if they trip over a line even once and treat the local women like their personal sex toys. The odd insurgent with the kind of gas that makes your skin melt off your bones. I don’t lose sleep over men like that. Kuwait wasn’t fun but that was mostly long rides in humvees for three months. Didn’t even fire my rifle before we were sent home. Everything since then has been mostly Latin American clusterfucks.” Goody scratches his chin. “There have been other things, places I can’t talk about, where I haven’t been able to do much more than watch my guys’ backs through a scope, but that ain’t much. All in all, I can’t say I mind the trade for what I’ve been given.”_

_“That’s something.”_

_“Hm. It’s easy. No questions. No complications. Go here. Do this. Yes sir, no sir, thank you sir. Don’t get caught sucking your dick and I’m golden once I hit my twenty.”_

_“Less complicated than watching the same six movies over and over trying to pick up moves.”_

_“You got moves, cher. Moves to spare.” Goody kisses his fingers, avoiding the knuckles. “And I see you practicing when you think I’m asleep. You’re a terror.”_

_“You say that like it turns you on.”_

_“It does. Everything about you turns me on.” Goody says, smooth as melted butter with twice the slide._

_There’s nothing of a request in those words when Goodnight Robicheaux says them. He knows there isn’t; he really does. It’s been good finding out that someone can feel that for him and not ask or demand. He’s been getting used to the way those words, out of Goody’s mouth are just a statement. _

_What Billy has not gotten used to is the way hearing him talk puts his body through an incinerator in slow motion. It starts small, with a breathless sensation as the back of his neck burns. His lower back heats up next. The soles of his bare feet go warm. The fire spreads from those places up and down until they meet and he is one low-level blaze all through his body, itchy and unmoored and aflame. _

_They’ve been doing something in the ballpark of fucking each other for going on a quarter of a year now. Making a mess of wherever they fall together with come and lube and spit and sweat as they laugh and moan and maybe, if they’re honest (and they do try to be) cry all over each other is more real than anything Billy’s ever done before but it’s not the kind of sex he’s seen in porn. It’s not the kind of sex he was stolen for. It’s not the kind of sex the truckers and businessmen and Army boys who go to work at Ft. Benning with Goody pay him for. _

_It bothers Billy (a lot, it bothers him a lot) that other people get to enjoy his body in a way that Goody doesn’t. He wants Goody. He wants Goody when. That is a personal revolution considering he’s never enjoyed being wanted before, period, let alone returned the sentiment. Not a woman with high breasts and a wet pussy and definitely not a man with a powerful arms and hard cock and harder fists but. Yet here he is, wanting wants Goody. _

_Billy knows that Goody is going to roll over like a happy puppy, put his ass up and whine for Billy and be thrilled every second of it. He’ll whimper and beg and be fucking ecstatic if all he ever gets are neck kisses and Billy’s fingers and that’s just. God. It is so fucking sexy and Billy’s jerked off more in his life to the memories of that sight and the feeling but it’s really not right. _

_Goody should have more. He should have more and Billy is dying to give him more especially in moments like this, when his whole body is an inferno._

_However, Billy’s not into denial or self-delusion so he knows that being free of the oppressive, suffocating anxiety and defensiveness that _people_ usually set off when they’re close like this is as near to a break as the universe going to cut him. Enjoying it when Goody turns in his embrace to continue his survey with his brilliant hands without that shit is pretty much living a miracle for as far as he’s concerned and he’s not ungrateful. He’s not. Fuck, he doesn’t think he’s ever been this close to something like happy in… ever actually. He even sent Yeon-Mi a postcard about it when they were in Birmingham. _

_There’s just a difference between happiness and satisfaction and for the first time ever, there’s enough time for him to actually think about what that means. He’s freaking out even as Goody lights him up because it’s confusing when he goes beyond the basics of “Goody deserves better, this is not enough” that beating a drum in his head and chest and okay yeah sometimes his dick when they’re together._

_See, Billy’s got “Who?” for his sexual satisfaction down. He’s grateful he found a “Who?” for sex (that’s a whole separate thing he’s still sometimes stunned by, the fact that he wants to have sex for fun at all), that “Who?” is Goody, and they actually work together so far to orgasmic effect. It’s just, once he got that figured out, the sex satisfaction thing turned out to have a “How?” too and, shit. “How?” is so _big_. _

_The “How?” of sex for him started when he realized that he really, actually gets to make choices about sex he was having. Intellectually, Billy did know that. He’s been making them pretty much since got his own life. He never took a client he didn’t want to take (including soothing Republican Repeater Pete tonight). He never did something he didn’t want to do to. Not ever. If he felt even remotely uneasy, he got out. _

_He could get off on sex. Depending on what he was doing and how he was feeling, he sometimes got off with clients. He could pretty much get himself there if he wanted, totally aside from all the things he had learned about how to come when he had to. He was young and healthy and his body actually worked the way it was supposed to so enough right kind of stimulation ended happily enough._  
  
When he was twelve, he’d actually gotten to spend enough time on the ancient arcade games in the lobby of the motor lodge long enough to leave KICKASS as the new high score name on the Galaga machine. The owner’s fourteen-year-old cousin Landon shared the code for free plays with him the weekend he was in town. He and Landon shared the special kind of closeness that came out of marathon videogame sessions and the horror of kneeling next to each other with their elbows still braced on the edge of a now-empty tub, wearing nothing but the towels draped ineffectively around their skinny frames after the farce of a bath they’d been forced to share, and absolutely not talking about what had just happened. In Billy’s opinion, coming during sex was kind of like playing Galaga really. Once you really got the hang of how to jiggle the joystick and hit the buttons, you could direct your fire however you damn well wanted every time you tried. 

_ The issue here is that somehow he never put the pieces together that sex acts and sex itself weren’t necessarily the same before Goody showed up. He hadn’t really understood there was this realm of pleasure that could go so far beyond just base sensation and climax, that sprawled out in all directions before, during, afterwards and in-between. That was life-altering all on its own. He’d been lost in learning that he could enjoy having sex, which he’d found to be a very different animal from experiencing pleasure while having sex. People confuse those two in movies all the time, maybe because they don’t know the difference themselves. He certainly hadn’t. _

_But now his “How?” of sex is realizing that as amazing as the sex they are having is (and it is really fantastic, seriously, he’s left his body a few times), Billy doesn’t want to just be pliant as Goody explores the topography of his arms, shoulders, chest, neck, lips and everything else he could with his gun-hardened hands while tiny action stars battle in the background. “How?” is the understanding that Billy wants to be active, to touch back, and do more than touch, actually. He wants to take the lead from Goody. He wants to move in on his soldier like he’s Han Solo in the cargo bay on Hoth. He wants pull Goody into his arms and sweep him away, in charge and in power, like he’s Rhett Butler because his ridiculous white boy needs kissing and often and by someone who know how. The “How?” of sex is realizing that this desire to flip their script is getting in the way of what they’re doing now because it isn’t what Billy really wants. Yet it’s more complicated than reorganizing what goes where at what speed and strength. Billy wants to move and grab Goody and take control of what they do with both hands and his mouth and his legs and anything else he can and the thought has his brain screeching to a full stop that would burn rubber on asphalt._

_All of which brings his sex “How?” leading back to the “Who?” but this time the “Who?” is himself. Billy’s the one thinking these things after all, things he hated, things that terrified him, things that hurt him. _

_This bullshit crashed face first into a “Why?” of sex and goddamnit. This where his head is at even as Goody nips at his earlobe and hums his French endearments into the hollow where skull and neck meet. _

_Billy doesn’t want there to be a “Why?” involved in sex beyond one, he adores Goody and two, sex with Goody is something that lets them get close and experience pleasure so intense that he’s afraid that his heart is going to grow legs, jump out of his rib cage and run off. _

_Except, he can’t ignore it. It’d require that he turn off his thoughts. The Valium did that. The Xanax did that. The roxys and (in the beginning when _they_ had wanted all their cargo pliant and unconscious) the goddamn heroin did that. He didn’t have a choice when they took that away from him, with a pill pushed between his lips or a needle slipped under the skin into a vein if he were lucky or muscle if he was not. There many and myriad abuses that he’s spent his short adulthood fighting to never have happen again. Most things he can protect against pretty well but the things he can prevent completely are few and far between. Of all the many, many thing Billy will fight tooth, nail, blood, and tears to never allow to have happen to him again, turning off inside his mind is the one thing that he can guarantee control over. He’s not doing that again. It’s one of the few things he’s sure he can manage, no matter what comes his way, so closing down his thinking himself because he’s _scared_? No. Fuck no. He might as well give up now and go join the other washed-up junkie disasters are waiting time in Times Square or Skid Row or Woodruff Park or wherever._

_Billy now has to face the reality that wanting to have the kind of sex that feels right to him, sex where he’s less shy and scared and not-totally-unlike-_them_ isn’t about him being like _them_. It’s maybe about finding the pieces of the brighter, bolder (and possibly more rakish) man Billy thinks he was supposed to be if he hadn’t grown up molded into bent and unnatural shapes by the strain of surviving his formative years trapped in that nomadic bazaar of human flesh and the pressures of the scar tissues that remained when he left nightmare behind. _

_And if he can’t manage any those things before Goody is done feeling his face up, he’d like to be able to at least say something about it. Just a sentence or two. Goody always does best when he doesn’t have to guess. Billy thinks it might be because he’s a talker himself. That’s the most important part which is, of course, why it’s also the hard part. Fuck._

_The prospect of laying those shaky new pieces of himself out for Goody is exhilarating and awful, and h finds himself desperate to do it. That’s insane. It’s crazy how Goody makes him so brave and so fragile at the same time._  
  
But there’s no easy way around those feelings. There’s only through. Do or do not. There is no try. 

_Fuck. _

_Fucking fuck. _

_“Goody?”_

_“Hm?”_

_“I want-“_

_He breaks off. It catches in his throat like fresh gum in on the bottom of a rubber sole. He snaps his teeth shut and huffs out through his nose. This isn’t working. _

_Goody twists in his lap to face him straight on bracketing his hips with his strong thighs and locking his ankles around his back. The blue of his eyes is disappearing by the second as his pupils grow with his eager curiosity. “Yes, what do you want, Cher?” He smiles like a coy hyena, all glee and teeth equal parts hunger and invitation. “You’ve kept me in terrible suspense.”  
“Yeah.” It’s the closest he can get to an apology. He wants to tell Goody that he’s sorry, that he’ll do better, that he can be more but that’s what Goody wants from him and it’s not who Billy wants to be. _

_Billy opens his mouth, tries to put words to all that but none of it comes out. He can find it in Korean, mostly, but not that he really needs it, the English fails him and he’s left panting around the chunks of expression that don't come close to filling the space where the language for his desire should be. He can feel his heartbeat speed up as his speechless makes his panic rise because he hasn't been had anything like this happen since he was a kid and everything was flat tones he didn't understand. He tenses against the memory, wills himself to stay here with Goody and Bruce Lee where he can control his life and his choices and his fucking words in English. “Goody,” he says finally and that, at least, is always right. _

_Goody twists fully in his arms so his back is to Bruce, curious and a little concerned but probably hiding the actual depth of his worry. “Cher?”_

_“Can I-” Billy tries but the question doesn't have an ending. Goody doesn't seem to need it. He nods, smiling and that's enough. His yes dissolves the reservation from Billy like sugar in water. Catching Goody’s face in his hands, firm but gently, and tugging him into a kiss is easy after that, and Goody going pliant on top of him is more melting sugar._

_Goody pulls back first, kitten-licking his upper lip before taking a deep breath that has an air to it that Billy would call satisfaction if he couldn't feel his hard-on. His blue eyes shimmer like hot pavement and he adjusts himself in the embrace so his arms are draped more comfortably around Billy’s neck. It frees up Billy's hand to wander up under his shirt and down below his waistband. _

_“So good,” Goody purrs, soft and warm, wriggling closer. “Love it when you want me. Feels like...” he gives a little hum of contemplation as he considers what poetry he wants to spew up then says, “Your hands were made to take me.”_

_Yeah. Fucking poetry out of nowhere and Billy has to deal with silly white boy with the Disney princess name throwing up roses on him. It does mean he's probably doing this right though, thank fuck. “I don't know what to do.” Billy admits. _

_“You can do whatever you want.” Billy doesn't know what his face does exactly but he can feel it contorting. Goody sighs in response to the expression he's wearing now and strokes one thumb up the side of his neck to pet the underside of his jaw, encouraging it to relax. “I'll like whatever you do and if I don't I'll just say so.”_

_“Will you though?” Goody talked all the time. He bitched his way through two-thirds of their encounters, complaining about everything he could, but he didn't say shit about the things that should bother him like Billy tricking or turning away from his touch or a dozen other things. _

_“On my life.” He leans back, into Billy's embrace and out of his own control. “I'll say, mon vainqueur, I swear on my love.”_

_Goody smiles to bind his promise and Billy feels absolutely breathless as a that kung-fu soundtrack crests in the background because oh, fuck, Billy believes him. Of all the things Billy could have found when he rolled into this shitty Army town, that someone could have asked Billy to trust and all the things that Billy could have faith in, genuine love for him is the last thing he would have expected. But he has it now and it's more solid than his sense of self in some ways. It's a precept that he can rely on, Goody’s love, and even though he's been here for all of it, he's not sure how it happened. _

_He's so grateful almost distracting so but he's still hard and Goody is still on top of him and the warmth and thrill of all that love sharpens his hunger into something a little more focused and honed. He kisses Goody, hard and deep, pulling him tight against his body like a matinee idol even though they're sitting down and Goody hums in delight. _

_Billy thrills at that happy sound, the one that means that Goody’s heating up like wax, turning soft and pliant in that way that meant he could be pushed and kneaded into any kind of shape Billy’s hands put him in. It’s the greenest light and a foot on a gas pedal, the engine inside Billy that’s been in desperate reverse or a sleepy neutral his whole life raging to fierce growling action as he grabs Goody’s hips before twisting to toss his skinny ass onto the mattress. _

_Goody laughs, delighted, which shouldn’t surprise Billy, it really shouldn’t (especially considering, well, Goodnight’s everything) but it does anyway. Goody downright is downright giddy as scrambles up towards the (stolen) motel pillows at the far end of Billy’s bed before he sprawls like a old Hollywood starlet awaiting a slow pan shot on a bearskin rug. He wiggles his thick eyebrows once, plants a foot on the bed, knee bent to the ceiling and declares, “Well, Mr. Rocks, whatever will you do with me now?” Goody fixes him with a solid smolder for all of a half a second before he loses it and starts giggling._

_Fuck he’s perfect, Billy thinks, as he tackles him, mouth wet and open and hungry for any piece of Goody he can reach. He paws at Goody’s clothes because there are too many of them between him and all that soft skin he knows they’re hiding and Goody makes happy sounds as he works that just make Billy feel more desperate, more feral. He hears the sound of a seam ripping as he tugs Goody’s shirt over his head and all he can think is good and mine and more like a fucking animal but Goody’s legs have wound around his waist and he’s trying his best to match Billy’s mouth measure for measure so maybe this particular animal is welcome here. _

_ It’s still terrifying, the way Billy can lose himself in the physicality of it all. He’s seen a lot of movies that talk about the monsters that live inside men’s hearts. He’s seen enough of real monsters and done enough damage to men’s faces with his own two hands to have reason to be afraid of the predator that’s always slept inside him but he’d spent so much time worrying about it he forgot that any creature in him would still be part of him, want what he wants, love what he loves and need what he needs. So, of course, this hungry beast in him wants to devour Goody but it was woken by joy and desire so that’s what it wants from his ridiculous Disney fool of a lover and if the way Goody was moving him, tearing at his clothes and bucking against him in return, Billy could trust him to be strong enough to handle being consumed. _

_It was safe. Goody was safe and so Billy was safe too. _

_“Want to be in you,” Billy manages to get out when they’re skin to skin, lips to lips, sweaty and slippery and tangled against each other. Goody gives a fully body shiver and moans directly into his mouth and clutches at the back of his neck with his right hand while his left hangs on to his shoulder so hard Billy imagines his fingerprints leave indentations. _

_“Please,” is the first coherent word Goody manages. It doesn’t really stay coherent long as he devolves into begging. Billy has gotten very good at using his fingers since the first time. “Please, cher, I want- I’ve wanted- I- Please. You can have anything. All of me, mon vainqueur, ’s yours.”_

_“Okay.” That is a pathetic thing to say, especially when his fingers were actually inside Goody, making him whine like that. God, every character Paul Newman has every played would be so disappointed in him. Fuck. He bites his lip, inhales the smell of Goody’s sweat and the growing scent of sex building between them and tries again. “Thank you.” Shit. That was awful too. Fuck. _

_But Goody looks up at him with bright eyes, so bright they’re almost wet and pulls him down by the neck so their foreheads are smashed together, tight and close, and rubs the tip of his nose along the side of Billy’s. “Don’t do that. Don’t do that like every second with you isn’t the best gift I ever got. Don’t. Billy, Jesus, Billy.” He tips himself up so his lips can touch Billy, the brush his chin because the angle is still a little awkward and Billy wants to cry with how soft it is. “Billy, this is all I want, for the rest of my fucking life.”_

_Billy nods as best he can which is not well at all and fumbles for a condom. The infirmary gives them away like candy so they’re always on hand, although unlike the lube (which he’s just taken to keeping next to the bed for ease of access considering how often they use it) it takes a minute for his free hand to hit pay dirt. Once he has one though, it’s the work of a second to get it open. He’s better with them than he is at writing in English and navigating Columbus, although he’s more awkward covering himself and he has to pull away and sit up to do it. _

_When he’s done he finds Goody sprawled out like some kind of fucking Renaissance painting, the kind he’s only seen in films or library books, legs akimbo, arms open, inviting and waiting. Only instead of the weird yellow hallow, Goody is radiating happiness so brightly practically glows with it. _

_Billy feels like not unlike the last time someone elbowed him in the gut. The sound he makes is similar, a small “Oh,” as the air leaves him along with his damn soul._

_Goody tilts his head on the pillow, a small frown marring the absolute perfection of the picture he makes. “You alright, cher?”_

_Billy shakes himself out of it. “It’s fine. Sorry. You’re so beautiful.” He rubs the back of his neck with one hand and grins a little sheepishly. “It’s nothing.”_

_“It’s nothing he says,” Goody echoes, eyes rolling. “‘You’re so beautiful just looking at you’s got me looking like a poleaxed possum but it’s nothing’. Right. Of course.” He grins, all teeth and delight. “Cher, get down here and fuck me before I lose my patience with your ridiculous, gorgeous face more than I already have.”_

_Billy smiles back. He can’t help it. Goody’s joy is an infection and he’s not particularly interested in the cure. “Anything you want.”_

_“Just you,” Goody assures him as he slides into the haven of his spread thighs. “Only ever you.”_

_He goes slow, not for Goody, who opened with his usual sloppy eagerness and is egging him on with chanting assents and heels pressing into his lower back so hard it's almost painful, but because everything is so much more than he thought it would be. Not just because everything he did was transactionary (and it was) and not just because they were all strangers (and they were) but because none of that sex was ever making love. And holy shit, doesn’t that just make all the difference in the world? Billy’s had the kind of sex that ends with him inside people before. Not often, about a handful of times, but he has done it. None of those encounters, scattered over the last decade, prepare him for the experience of sliding inside Goody. _

_Another long breathless “Oh,” spilled out of Billy as he bottoms out. There’s just too much. _

_“You keep saying that,” Goody laughs and Billy closes his against the feeling of him clenching around his cock. He doesn’t stop himself from leaning into Good reaches up to stroke fingers through his bangs, pushing them off his forehead before combing through his hair._

_“I can’t think.”_

_“Why thank you.” Goody preens, stroking through Billy’s hair again, toying with his nape then starting over. “Mmm, you feel good too, cher. I knew you would, knew you’d fit inside me like I was the mold God poured you into when he made you and you do, Billy. I was made to hold you.”_

_Billy drops his forehead to Goody’s shoulder because he cannot deal with Goody’s poetry, not right now, not when he’s just trying to stay sane. Not when he actually agrees with it. “Goody?”_

_“Yes?”_

_It occurred to him to ask Goody to shut up but that isn’t what he actually wants. He loves when Goody talks. He loves the way Goody feels. He loves the way Goody holds him and touches him. Shit. “I love you.”_

_He can feel Goody’s breath hitch beneath him. Billy lifts his head so he can see that crooked smile but his expression is something softer than a grin and far more tender. “So much, mon vainqueur. More than I’ve ever loved anything else.”_

_That’s too much. Billy knows it’s true but with how much he feels in his body, feeling this much in his heart is overwhelming. He’s too far in his head and he has to get out or he’ll be frozen like this forever and he doesn’t want that. He wants to make love to Goody the way he deserves, the way his hungry body so clearly needs, the way they both so desperately want. _

_He pushes himself up on his elbows and maneuvers himself so that his hands are in Goody’s short hair and a twist of his wrists would allow him to trace his eyebrows or sharp cheekbones. Goody looks up at him like he’s everything. Billy knows he isn’t but he kisses Goody, rolls his hips and hopes he can to be enough._

_It feels amazing. It’s stars and comets. His skin is alive, pleasure sparking down his spine with every thrust. Hs chest is so tight that every breath catches before it stutters out loud and ragged over the almost-familiar-but-not-right tonal sounds of Chinese dialogue from the movie still playing in the background. _

_But Goody’s face under him, close and slipping between slack bliss and contorted ecstasy as he whimpers and mumbles incoherently? The tight grip and slide of that slick hole around his cock is nothing compared to that. That’s better than his own feeling and that’s pretty fucking great. Goody’s expressions are so much better._

_“Goody? Hey, Goody?”_

_“Cher?”_

_“Talk to me.”_

_Goody stares up at him, dazed and still so bright that this time when he blinks a tear slips out and rolls down towards his hairline. “I don’t know what to say.”_

_Billy chokes out a laugh. Goody always knows what to say. It would figure that the one time he actual asks him to speak he’s stumped. “Anything. Just… like it when you talk.”_

_Goody turns his face and presses his mouth to the nearest skin he can reach. His lips make warm contact the flesh inside Billy’s wrist. It sends a shiver down his spine that makes him shove in harder than before and Goody gasps out, “That! Ngh, yeah. I’ve needed that. Needed you in me, your gorgeous cock, filling me up. I didn’t know how empty I was until you filled me up, mon vainqueur.”_

_“Yeah.” _

_“Yes?”_

_“Goody,” Billy groans, because words are hard and his English so hard to reach right now with how amazing this is, Goody’s body under him and around him and on him and the things Goody is saying. He tries to return it but his name is all he can manage so he says it again, meaning it and everything that comes with it, breathing it into the skin of below his ear that tastes like heaven made flesh. “Goody.”_

_“You want me to say that having you inside me’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me? I can’t. That was meeting you, loving you. But, fuck, this is- It’s so, I- Billy, Billy you make me feel like I’m dying and I don’t ever want to stop. Just keep fucking me, okay? That’s- I just want you to- Billy, this is so good, cher, _please_.” Goody begs dropping one leg from around his back and planting it on the bed to give himself more leverage. It changes everything and all that force makes Billy moan like he’s dying. _

_Goody gasps at his own change of angle and shoves a hand between their bodies to fist his cock and the drops other to the pillow just above his head and grabs on so hard his knuckles turn white like he’s afraid if he lets go he’ll fall off the world. Billy can feel his knuckles scrape against the hair on his stomach pushes up on his elbows, doing his best to find a rhythm to match. _

_The babble that pours forth from Goody in response is like a damn bursting. “Oh, fuck, oh shit, Billy, Jesus, yes, I’m choking on you. Christ, I can feel you in my guts, my lungs, my heart, oh, oh God, cher. This- This is- Please, please don’t- Don't stop fucking me. Don’t fucking stop.” _

_“Never.” Billy manages to pant, sweat dripping off his forehead onto Goody’s cheek. _

_They both break seconds later. Goody spills over his own fist and both their bellies hot and wet chanting “Fuck, Billy, I’m coming, fuck, fuck, God, Billy, I love you.” Billy is dragged over by tight aftershocks of Goody’s orgasm clenching around his cock seconds later, kissing an exhausted groan into Goody’s slack mouth. _

_His whole body goes rigid with a pleasure so blinding Billy loses himself. When he comes back, Billy finds himself slumped on top of Goody’s firm shoulder, gasping in the aftermath with long dexterous fingers combing through hair, and Fists of Fury still playing on the TV. Goody is mumbling to himself under his breathe too low for Billy to understand but in no great hurry to move. Billy shifts just enough to keep any of their limbs from going dead. Goody makes a happy sound in response and Billy tips his head back to meet Goody’s gaze and finds him smiling like the purple cat from Alice in Wonderland._

_“What?”_

_“What indeed. Cher, that was amazing. I am…” Goody heaves a dramatic sigh. “Staggered.”_

_“You’re staggered?”_

_“Indeed. Overwhelmed. Dazzled even.”_

_Billy lifts a brow at that. “Dazzled?”_

_“Yes.” Goody says, firmly. “I was definitely dazzled by your dick, dearest.”_

_Billy doesn’t hesitate. He grabs the pillow that Goody’s head is not resting on and smashes it into his face. _

_Goody’s laughter is as loud as his sex noises were, maybe louder. Billy loves them just much, probably more. They’re infectious. He doesn’t know how loud his laughter is but when the other pillow hits him back, slamming into his shoulder, he figures they’re probably pretty comparable. _

_Honestly, Billy didn’t know he could be this happy. Even with all the movies he’s seen, he didn’t have enough imagination to come up with Goodnight Robicheuax. But he’s starting to learn._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: 
>   * First and foremost, I missed yall like crazy. Thank you for not giving up on me.
>   * K, note on the storage containers. If you're curious about what I mean? Santa Clarita Diet has a really great example of them as does Storage Hunters. They're just out in the middle of nowhere, no one checks on them, and they're temperature controlled so they wont get too-hot or too cold (doesnt mean they're air-conditioned just wont reach extreme heat or freeze. It's wild O_O. White Billy is doing is still against the rules of most sites and likely illegal.
>   * Blockbuster! Open til midnight every night, 12 videos at a time, 3 day rental on older releases I am old enough to have had friends who worked there and went to one of the last Blockbusters in Alaska a couple years ago. RIP.
>   * Ok. Ft. Benning, TRADOC, The School of the Americas and WHINSEC aka The Torture School. This is a real thing. The School of the Americas was opened after WWII and moved from the Panama Canal to Ft Benning. It came first then came United States Army Training and Doctrine Command(TRADOC) which oversees it in the 70s. They taught in Spanish, they focused on working with our Latin American neighbors and taught counter-interrogation and torture techniques. That's what they legally report. But what people who have been there reported is that they also taught how to fucking torture people. Basically - a lot of the horrible shit that happened in Latin America in the name of fighting communism and then later in the name of fighting the drug war? Were taught in Columbus, GA by the Army. They changed from The School of the Americas to WHINSEC in 2000 but accounts from former instructors state that they're still there, still teaching as of 2017. SO. YEAH. American tax dollars at work. 
>   * Swick is the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (SWCS) - and cuz military folks love to give shit nicknames they call it Swick. It's the SPECOPS, PSYOPS and Civil Affairs (aka the dudes who work with UN Peace Ops) training base so you can guess why he's indignant about torture school comparison.
>   * The AIDS era - Gonna talk about this for a second. I honestly find it impossible to write a story about queer men in the 90s and NOT write about HIV/AIDS. It's disingenuous, unrealistic, and quite frankly disrespectful. By the mid-90s we knew what it was, we knew how to prevent it, and we had maintenance methods in AZT. However, by that point there'd been so much damage done? It was a lot of aftermath. I grew up in the late 90s/early 00s but my sex talk pivoted around HIV/AIDS at around age 5. In my life, which was queer positive and open to queer people there were almost no older gay men. They were all dead and the few who weren't were sick, or had lost everyone. The mid-90s were mass mourning for the lucky who'd survived. Danny is important because he represents a piece of our community that's lost. The queer community generally and men specifically had an apocalypse and a lot of people didn't survive it. We just got to the other side of it. I'm begging you, if you are queer? Find the older queers in your community - and I mean 50+ and get to know them. We need the bridges they create.
>   * Yul Brynner was born in Russia and was in fact mixed race as a descendent of the indigenous Mongol Buryat people and incidentally, was an naturalized American citizen so, ya know, that customer can shut the fuck up. 
>   * Movies! There were 2 Bruce Lee movies Called Fist/s of Fury. One is Fist of Fury and the other is Fists of Fury. They're watching Fist of Fury/Big Boss but the American version wouldn't be released as Big Boss until 2000s so it would have been called Fists of Fury. I know, trixy but 70s imports were a hella mess.
>   * Bruce Lee did the Green Hornet (an American TV show) before he broke out in Hong Kong cinema but the two really fed into each other. He did film in both English and Chinese and pretty much his own fight work. He really was something ya. And a certified hottie dear god [have mercy](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/574dd66227d4bdb54a2f65e3/1467160653163-ZM0VK01HNMLEND7FDK2A/?format=1000w&content-type=image%2Fjpeg)

**Author's Note:**

> The ridiculous notes with research and stuff will be forthcoming later. ATM, I really just want to get this up.
>
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